Originally posted by olderwiser
They really are very poor at this communication thing aren't they. So many whys, how's and not so many watts raised.
1) Why change reporting parameters from Gwh under management to active customers
2) What does 48% uptake in DMCs mean in billable Gwh or customer numbers
3) Why does it cost around $1.2 m to arrange a loan (200k in the previous 4c)
4) How much impact on profit when revenue is down graded from 44m to 32m.
1) It is not entirely disturbing to see Gwh under management fade away as a reporting stat. Who could really apply it usefully anyway. Active customers is another version but I expect more meaningful in the long term.
2) I will skip not a clue, more detail required
3) Academic but I would love to know. For sure there are plenty of costs and LPE may have born much of Blackrocks due diligence. But good to know its been peered at sniffed, tasted, probed and probably fecal tested. After all that they still put $30m on the line with a decent proportion of the return based on share price growth above $1.00/share.
4) Here is the real puzzle and I suggest not to much. The income sources are quite diverse, embedded networks, DMC, solar, gas, hot water, air con. When wholesale power and network charges reduce and the margin increases it suggests LPE do not apply a fixed % markups but more of a fixed markup in dollars, which will not be so strongly effected by wholesale price drops. Volume of power is the key factor in that case.
Volume growth has clearly had a stall as calculated below
4c
June GwH 204.7 Growth in GwH/quarter 26.7
Sept 227.6 22.9
Dec* 233.6 6.0
* calculated by 204.7 + 14% = 233.6
If you can accept this as a legitimate one off cost in avoiding the previous loan, the future is brighter.
Growth will now resume on an accelerated no longer capital restrained path, and will also have a backlog of pent up customer demand to action. This should appear in the March 4c which will benefit from high usage months and 3 month billing accounts starting to be received.
Top it all of with todays bot action, all those 616 orders on both buy and sell side must mean something
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I think reporting on active customers is a more mature way of reporting when you are diversifying into a DMC space.
I also think it may be hard for LPE to translate the current business change to investors where the original model focused on selling GWH to residental buildings the DMC is focused on increasing active customers.
The business has steadied under the old model to a point where it is operational cf+ it is now transitioning into a more modern company which = bigger opportunity.
thoughts?
(20min delay)